When the Blizzard Gets Tough, the Tough Go Swimming

Hot cocoa. Crackling logs on the fireplace. Electric blankets. Snowsuits. Most of us during a blizzard try to find the best ways to keep warm.

Elaine Howley of Waltham, MA, wanted to find a way to “swim.”

The only solution was to don some superhero outfits and go “snow-swimming.”

Taken by her husband, Mark Howley, Elaine, in her backyard on Columbus Ave., picked a Union Jack suit for Tuesday while the storm raged on. She opted for the Wonder Woman suit on Wednesday after the snow had settled a bit.

“By way of explaining this absurdity— I’m a marathon swimmer and I’ve been cooped up unable to get to the pool or ocean (yes, I swim outside in the winter, too) for a few days now,” said Elaine, “and snow swimming seemed the only obvious solution to that problem. I’m hoping for another session this afternoon!”

A marathon swimmer, indeed. Elaine is 37 and grew up in South Jersey, but has lived in Waltham for the past 12 years. She became a marathon swimmer in 2006 and completed her first Boston Light Swim, an eight-mile swim from the Boston Lighthouse to Southie.

Since then, she’s completed the so-called “Triple Crown of Marathon Swimming,” which includes solo crossings of the English Channel (21 miles completed in Aug. 2009 in 13 hours 55 minutes), the Catalina Channel (20 miles completed in Sept. 2008 in 10 hours 57 minutes) and a circumnavigation of Manhattan Island (28.5 miles completed in June 2009 in 8 hours 39 minutes).

Elaine also holds the record for the fastest double-crossing of the Boston Harbor (a 16-mile out-and-back of the Boston Light Swim course that she completed in Aug. 2010 in 7 hours 7 minutes.)

“This past summer, I became the fist person to swim the length of Lake Pend Oreille in Northern Idaho,” she said, “a distance of 32.3 miles completed in July 2014 in 20 hours 25 minutes. I also completed a 1-mile ‘ice swim” in Boston Harbor in December 2012 in 29 minutes, thereby becoming the first Boston-area resident to gain admittance to the International Ice Swimming Association based in South Africa.”

A marathon swim, Elaine tells us, is any swim longer than 10K (6.2 miles) that is completed without the assistance of a wetsuit or any contact with supporters or support craft.

She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Marathon Swimming Federation, and last January the board released a comprehensive list of rules of marathon swimming.

“I spend a lot of time swimming in Dorchester Bay at the L Street Bathhouse in Southie in summer and winter,” said Elaine. “I also like to train at Nahant and in Lake Cochituate in Wayland in the summer— both are great locations for training and I have a good crew of friends to swim with at both places.”

But in the wintertime, she swims at L Street in Southie and at the Wayland Community Pool with the Wayland Masters swim team coached by my friend and fellow marathon swimmer Jen Dutton.

“Snow swimming seems mostly safe to me— there’s actually less contact with the cold snow than it might look, as it’s pretty fluffy and I didn’t spend a very long time out there- a couple minutes- so was not hypothermic,” she said. “Hypothermia poses a much bigger risk for cold water events like the ice mile and channel swims because you’re submerged for a much longer period of time. Hypothermia is not something to mess around with, but ice swimming can be a lot of fun.”

Elaine heads to Newport, VT, in a few weeks to take part in the first U.S. Winter Swimming Championships hosted by Kingdom Games.

“They’re actually cutting a 25-meter long 2-lane pool in the ice of Lake Memphremagog and we’re going to do a few sprint races,” she said. “It’s going to hurt, but I don’t anticipate any real issues with hypothermia because the duration of submersion will be quite short, likely less than two minutes for the longest event.”